The Beauty Of Giving Back

Salon Owner Provides Scholarships

July 5, 2004|By Joseph Mann Business Writer

Faye Bailey's first beauty salon, a tiny, two-chair shop on Davie Boulevard, was hardly 2 years old in 1987 when she started providing thousands of dollars in scholarships to two of her customers' children.

Her husband, Sylvester, was stunned after seeing the big scholarship payments noted in their checkbook. "The way she runs a business is not what you learn in Business 101," he said. "She is always giving. But it works. I just gave up and followed her lead," said Sylvester Bailey, 47, who owns a convenience store and is his wife's partner in All Dolled Up Unisex Beauty Salons Inc.

Helping young people from the community obtain a good education and preparing them for life are key elements in Faye Bailey's business philosophy. "I don't just want to make money. I want people to share," said Bailey, who is 43 and the mother of two.

Bailey, who had worked at BellSouth and cashed in $4,000 of her company shares in 1985 to set up the first All Dolled Up salon, has built a small shop into a thriving business with 17 full-time employees. She has two salons in Sunrise and Deerfield Beach that attract about 350 customers per week and sell beauty products.

Bailey's success did not come overnight. During her first year, business was slow. Bailey, who started styling her friends' hair when she was a girl in Macon, Ga., decided she needed to offer customers something special. Making short trips to North Carolina with her husband, she obtained advanced training at Dudley Cosmetology University and brought back ideas for hairstyles that were ahead of the local competition.

Bailey's customers, mostly old friends from BellSouth, passed the word that she was offering new and unusual hairstyles, and the shop filled up. "My teacher always told me, `Do something different,'" Bailey said.

In 1990, Bailey moved All Dolled Up to a new location in Sunrise, and five years later added the Deerfield Beach shop, both of which are equipped for wireless computers. Her tastefully furnished salons, which play contemporary Christian music during the day and jazz in the evenings, are designed to provide a soothing and restful atmosphere to customers, 90 percent of whom are women.

A deeply religious woman, Bailey credits her success to "God first," then to her professional ability and hard work, her employees and her customers. Good profits from her salons have allowed her and Sylvester, who helps coordinate the salons, to provide scholarships to local families and to start the tuition-based ADU School of Cosmetology, a state-licensed, nonprofit training institute where students learn to cut and style hair, apply makeup and do manicures and pedicures.

Opened last year with the help of a donation from Wayne Barton, a former police officer and founder of an after-school study and exercise center in Boca Raton, the school now has six students.

"It's very rare that you find people like Faye Bailey, who is a professional, a philanthropist and a motivator," said Karline Ricketts, owner of Karline's of the Palm Beaches, a beauty salon and spa in West Palm Beach. "She gives without expecting anything," said Ricketts, who has known Bailey for nearly four years.

Joseph Mann can be reached at jmann@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4665.

ALL DOLLED UP UNISEX BEAUTY SALONS INC.

Business: Beauty salons. Owners also operate ADU School of Cosmetology.